Feeding 10B People Will Require Genetically Modified Food
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
(Before you flip out, I'm not saying GMO is a bad thing. I'm saying this is bad logic.)
edit: Selective breeding is not GMO. If your argument is "We've always done GMO", you're wrong. Would you be willing to ban CRISPR and similar tech and do it all the old-fashioned way? No? Then GMO is not selective breeding.
I think you're confused. You probably eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.
The question isn't "should we genetically modified food?" because we already are and have been doing it for centuries.
The question is "which GMO techniques should we use?"
But yeah parent comment underlines all the pathetically common misconceptions and broad ignorance about GMOs.
Maybe anti-GMOs movements that might lead to believe that they are not used yet and that it's still completely up to debate ? I don't really know.
If that's your argument, it's very common, as seen in this thread. It's still wrong. GMO is specifically about laboratory manipulation of genes, including cross-species gene insertion, which is not possible via selective breeding.
It's actually about a specific narrow range of techniques, not laboratory manipulation generally.
> cross-species gene insertion, which is not possible via selective breeding.
Cross-species genetic transfer occurs in the wild and, as such, is one of the forms of genetic drift on which the selection in selective breeding acts, so this claim is false.
It is not one of the mechanisms that is accelerated by modern methods of accelerated genetic change that are frequently paired with selective breeding as a similarly-rapid, far less controlled, and more label-friendly alternative to “GMOs”.
> I assume you're arguing that selective breeding is the same thing as GMO.
This seems to be just repeating the mistake pointed out upthread; no, current agricultural productivity is not a result of selective breeding alone without transgenic technology; GMOs are a real and significant thing in current agriculture, and part off what the current food productivity is built on.
Saying that we managed to feed people so far without the use of GMO is wrong since they're used, even if not everywhere on earth, even if not all techniques, end of story.
Now you're conflating traditional crop breeding such as selection and hybrid breeding with GMO crops, which is dishonest. The article is specifically about GMO crops.
>eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.
I was surprised how you could possibly believe this, it makes sense only with that overbroad GMO crop definition.
That being said, I pointedly did not say "GMO BAD". I said that the article is making a bad argument for its necessity.
"Genetically modified" does not apply to selection and cross breeding. To create a variety of corn that can resist herbicides, you need some advanced technology that modifies the genes, hence GMO.
So, no, we haven't been genetically modifying our food for centuries. The process appeared a few decades ago in the agro-industry.
> You probably eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.
It's everywhere in the USA and some other countries. In Europe , GMO are rarely directly present in food. But, indirectly, many animals are fed with GMO, especially GMO soybean.
I assume that is only if you live in US? GMO Food are near non existent in EU.
Genes are genes, and changes to them are changes to them.
Well if selective breeding is GMO then there is nothing on earth that isn't GMO. We have been doing selective breeding since before age of industrial revolution.
It's like a 20yo with $500K in the bank simply giving up on everything and not working anymore thinking they'll be fine. As far as they are concerned "life is better than ever" at age 25. Just because you can't measure a debt certainly doesn't mean it's non-existent.
Good question. I won't answer that.
"Did we do it without GMO food? "
If we only consider GMO as targeted modification of a DNA sequence using methods other than selective breeding, no we didn't. That technology has been around for maybe 30 years. The world's pop hasn't gone up 30% since.
"Isn't a lot of today's food the result of GMO?"
In the West, yes. But despite the promises of lower water usage, more nutritious crops, GMO foods seems to be mostly adding Round Up resistance to crops to enable more mechanized agricultural practices (not necessarily cheaper for the end user).
This is not necessarily robust and it promotes monoculture. Furthermore, financial considerations might make it more economical to farm something non-edible, or not farm at all [0].
[0] Yes, theoretically the price of food would increase to make it profitable again. However, the equilibrium would be at higher prices (pricing out the poorest) and lower Q.S. (i.e. it's good that the poor aren't eating, cause there ain't enough to go around). Besides, it takes time for the system to reach equilibrium, at which point there's a nice famine.
“an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.”
Which is sane definition in my view and accepted in most part of the world. Somehow only in some places (cough) is the definition arguable.
No, we didn't. We did it with GMOs. You might argue we could have done it without GMOs, but that's a hypothetical not what actually happened.
Also, even with GMOs, we haven't done it sustainably—one thing new GMOs are looked to as a solution for is maintaining output with the worse conditions resulting from existing large-scale agricultural practiced without further worsening them as current practices would.
-Greater prevalence of plant-based diets
-Steroids and hormones in farmed animals
-Pesticide development and usage
-Vitamin/nutrient supplementation
-Less whaling :)
Simplot's potatos are GMO and they used to be an advantage in yield and hence lower price, that is until Climate Changes and your breed and farm land couldn't adapt to the changes as quickly. And yield were no were as good as it used to be.
Netherland spend large part of the past 10+ years perfecting their agricultural output without resorting to GMO. Using good old fashion technology ( old Fashion in the case of HN ), Greenhouse, Temperature Control, lots of sensors, Big Data. Basically farming in modern industry scale. McCain, and Lamb Weston has since been following the same foot steps and getting great results.
Most of the Food Production in China, India, and many parts of the world still has a long way to go in terms of efficiency and capacity. There is still a lot could be done in Food Industry with Technology without resorting to GMO.
“an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.”
i.e Cross Bleeding is not GMO, which it seems to be the case in some part of the world / some HNers / somewhere in Silicon Valley circle.
I am not sure if it is actually ZERO, since I remembered even in the very few approved GMO products in EU, each member state can grant and deny them on their own. And from a high level overview I doubt there is even 1% of GMO food.
So as someone who doesn't really like GMO Food, you should be proud of yourself.
And it is one reason why European products tends to be more expensive before from a World wide perspective, and doesn't do well in export. But ever since these GMO Free and Organic Food popping up in US, EU products were able to ride along with the tide.
GMO might not be the only way, but it's probably the only economically viable way.
The meat industry also generally gets less competitive as food becomes less plentiful. Feeding the worlds 600 million cows takes significantly more food than feeding 600 million people would. Granted not all cattle are fed from productive farmland, but it’s a common practice.
I am also rather hesitant to use 3$, if we are looking 20+ years from now 2c/kWh for battery backed up solar power at grid scale seems possible. Combined with even minor improvements in desalination would significantly lower prices.
And why not just plant more crops in an area where water is plentiful, like the Amazon?
And...isn’t that exactly what we’re doing, making more farmland from the rainforest?
Anyway, Corn would be a bad though not completely irrational crop. Going for a 2 acre feet of water high yield variety would cost 2k per acre. Now yields vary but 200 bu/acre makes it simple 10$ per bushel of corn. A bushel is 56 pounds so we are talking 18 cents per pound of corn. Not that big a deal.
Current price per bushel of corn is $4.4. Adding $10 per bushel will be a huge economic shock. Given corn is a big input in most animal husbandry, this means most animal products will become more expensive.
Middle and upper class people will probably be able to pay more and eat the same things, but not the lower class.
However, as I said this is more a thought experiment than a practical solution. Higher food prices would result in less meat consumption, food waste, and likely less obesity. The most likely outcome seems to be more food production in less ideal locations not farming a literal desert using desalination.
Wow, good point, I did not expect that. So it should be sustainable, at least.
There is plenty of space but other than that...
How do you get constant massive quantities of nutrients, water, and other farming supplies? This would require lots of energy.
Don't forget that you'd need greenhouses that can withstand pretty extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. Manufacturing and transporting those also requires lots of energy.
Finally, people would have to live there, no? I could be wrong, but I don't think a small city in the desert, far away from everything and under extreme weather/temps, would be very sustainable.
Essentially as you irrigate near deserts you cause local climate change via huge amounts of water evaporation and thermal mass. The more land under irrigation the stronger the effect becomes.
High desert regions typically have the greatest diurnal-temperature variations, while low-lying humid areas typically have the least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diurnal_temperature_variation
Soil temperatures under cotton in Egypt: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-agricultu...
(4) The main effect of irrigation on soil temperatures is to reduce the amplitude of the daily temperature wave, no sudden change of temperature in the root zone taking place.
All it would take is a long canal, nothing outside our capabilities.
Not the canal, but the modification of the climate.
Globally with a non-desired negative consequence? It seems like it. GHG -> Climate change
Globally with a specific desired goal? Not so obvious, but some people have made interesting proposals:
- Melting the Artic Ocean by enlarging the Bering strait.
- Reversing sea rise by damning the Bering Strait.
- Capturing CO2 by dumping Fe into the oceans.
- Lowering global T by emitting SO2,
- Terraform the Sahara into a tropical jungle reversing desertification (once there are plants, more moisture would be retained)
- And others
Notice how they all have potentially catastrophic side-effects.
If you want to control the population, you'll have to resort to more old-fashioned means, like banning antibiotics and vaccine and the occasional genocide.
A growing population isn't a problem. How that population behaves is the concern.
There are plenty of resources on this planet to sustain more people. How the population uses and shares those resources is what needs to be addressed.
Population isn't growing because of births. It's growing because of much longer lifespans, that go hand-in-hand with the economic and health care improvements that are raising life expectancy from the 50s to the 70s in most countries. Another generation or two, and that effect disappears into the overall population.
Birth rates will decline when a level of poverty in an area goes down to below replacement levels. This happens everywhere measured.
Here's an unpopular idea: I like bring alive. I think most people do. I'm glad that there are many people on this planet living. I know that the environment suffers because of it but I'd rather have more people.
We humans can meet the challenges of our population on earth though the world will be changed for it.
If we focus on education and not poverty, that would seem an easier problem to solve. Unfortunately, there are more societal and cultural boundaries to overcome to educating certain segments of specific populations (women in some societies, homosexuals in others, untouchables in some).
Remember that high birth rates are only a problem in poverty.
And how can it be a problem only in poverty ? Doesnt the average American consume like ten fold what the average Indian does ?
Most do. And is abortion infanticide? Because abortion is widely accepted across the first world, and can result in the same thing.
> And how can it be a problem only in poverty ? Doesnt the average American consume like ten fold what the average Indian does ?
Yes, which is the point. Those who say "population control" is the answer are essentially saying "make third world countries with less consumption but higher birthrates change, not first world countries with low birthrates and high consumption". The US actually have stable, ideal birth rate currently. And I doubt even the most delusional population control advocate thinks reducing the US birth rate by 10 fold (from somewhere a little above 2 to .2) is a good idea (though I could be wrong). And many first world countries are even lower to the US, to the point its actually creating major societal problems (like Japan and Sweden). What the above commenter is trying to say is that as poverty levels go down, birth rates drop to replacement level or below.
So essentially to say "population control" is the ideal solution is to say make the areas of the world with high birth rates (largely developing nations, mostly in Africa) stop having children, rather than improving the consumption patterns and efficiency of those of us living in the first world.
Seems problematic to say the least.
In fact, the US, which offers tax breaks for families with more children, is right around what is considered the ideal birth rate as it currently stands. Projections for increased global population are being driven almost entirely by developing nations, most of which are in Africa. And most of the reasons for the high birth rates are entwined in a very complex web of factors, including poverty, education, and general health outcomes, none of which can be solved by waving a magic wand. The good news is that these countries are projected to level out their population growth as they do develop. The reality is that it will take time.
But this means that anyone who seriously considers "population control" as the means to dealing with climate change, world hunger, etc. completely misunderstand the realities surrounding both the growth of the global population and our ability to influence it. And that is without even considering the history of what "population control" has often meant, and the fact that it is a slippery slope that has been used to justify war, eugenics (if not in name then in function), and genocide, to say nothing of a whole host of societal issues like sexism.
Population control is not "the solution". "The solution" will require finding ways to make our societies sustainable at the increased population levels.
The diminished, superstitious minds of today, however, condemn the new generation of scientists who are doing the exact same thing.
GM crop is by definition commercial crop, half of Indian agricultural problems are because of death of local farming vs conventional farming (think energy costs, supply chains effectiveness, technology dependence and lack of biodiversity which hits food chain hard).
Why are we exactly fixed on GM crop but not on better food management policies, promotion of local farming and climate-related tech (ie. irrigation)? Is it because GMO has clear profit margin where above mentioned (and many more) doesn't?
One can argue even about selective breeding which also has its own costs (fragility of a given genetics), but GMO should, by rule, be heavily limited.
I'm not "against GMO" because I think it makes frankentomatoes that will eat us, or because I think that gene modification is intrinsically unhealthful. I'm (sort of) against GMO because genetically modified organisms are controlled by profit-focused corporations who lock farmers into a financial system that disadvantages them and promotes heavy use of brand-name herbicides that are not good for the surrounding ecosystem. Especially in 2nd/3rd world countries where people rely more heavily on waterways for water and their backyards for food, as opposed to the US where we can pay to outsource these problems, local ability to maintain a healthy environment without paying a multinational on a yearly contract is essential.
People have been able to plant saved seeds for all of human history. Programs that prevent the ability to grow your own food for only the cost of labor put farmers and local areas at a significant disadvantage by eliminating the possibility of subsistence farming. I know that GMOs are designed to increase yields -- but that's focused on farming as commodity.
Neotokio's remark about the "clear profit margin" of GMOs is, I think, exactly on the money.
Just because GMO can be used to solve human problems does not mean GMO will be used for human problems. It's more likely to solve corporate problems instead.
Eh, citation needed. Especially given the role of GM crops in sparking the Green Revolution and avoiding famine in India:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Start_in_Indi...
In 1961, India was on the brink of mass famine... India soon adopted IR8 – a semi-dwarf rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) that could produce more grains of rice per plant when grown with certain fertilizers and irrigation...In 1968, Indian agronomist S.K. De Datta published his findings that IR8 rice yielded about 5 tons per hectare with no fertilizer, and almost 10 tons per hectare under optimal conditions. This was 10 times the yield of traditional rice.
Indian Green Revolution was a spiritual successor of Mexican 'Green' Revolution (avoiding famine in Mexico), same people (corporations) responsible for both. Yes, famine was avoided, but let's look at the costs - energy + soil degradation + lack of biodiversity (btw. India STILL has tremendous malnutrition problem, crops are mainly exported - again - profit margins).
There is a big asymmetry here we are discussing, mainly, pre 'Green Revolution' agriculture was unsustainable because of population growth and lack of education (development of sustainable agriculture for internal use), while after revolution is unsustainable because of... same things (exchange lack of education for no need to educate). India didn't solve anything, it just pushed the problem further ahead while country monetized on exports (which, without a doubt, provided higher standard of living for some %).
Why not do what i already described? Better management, better climate related preparations, stronger internal supply lines? How is that worse than GM-way which seems to only beat those solutions in profits? Seems more reasonable to save energy, make agriculture less reliable on outsourced tech and empower local production.
I think GMOs are solution to problem from 1960-1970s, not from 2020.
While I personally prefer not to eat GMO food because of the uncertain effects it has on the body, at the population scale I believe it will eventually (though we don’t know when) be the case that advances in food efficiency are needed to withstand higher carrying capacity. I believe we’re already seeing the effects, with steroid/hormone use in animals, and with GMO crops.
There was an HBS article the pitted Solow’s ideas on technological advancement against Malthus’ population theory. I think both would agree that if population continues to rise, efficiency will be a necessity.
There’s no sensible reason to keep using infinite expansion as a measure of the health of national economies. We should change the goals to improved access to services, and more even distribution of national wealth (ie: lower spread between richest and poorest).
When we run out of fresh water, desalination should not be viewed as the answer but only as an emergency measure. Desalination requires abundant energy and pollutes the marine environment with over-salinated water. Recycling sewage I to drinking water only works as long as the equipment is maintained fastidiously and never breaks.
Rather than producing more food, we should focus on producing fewer people.
We also have grow lights, vertical farming, and urban farming. Which will greatly improve food yields.
Flipside, how many people have heard about gluten sensitivity 10 years ago? Why are so many people trying crazy diets like vegan, keto, carnivore? Virtually all of these diets have 1 thing in common, eliminating sugar from the diet.
Where do we get our sugar? Oh right, pretty much 100% of sugar beets are genetically modified.
I'm not trying to beat up GMO, but there seems to be something bad in our diet and perhaps it's these GMO plants.
What feeding X0e9 people requires is energy.
"Maybe anti-toilet-paper movements that might lead to believe that they are not used yet" Now everything sounds ridiculous but no one argued about the actual problems or advantages.
The equivalent of the surface of Africa is already being used for crops and going up, most of it to feed livestock.
There are projections of fishless oceans in less than 30 years, and we got 12 years to stop global warming. What could go wrong?
If countries were able to produce their own food then GMO food isn't necessary.
Just because we avoided the early catastrophe doesn’t mean Malthus was wrong.
At some point in the future we need to focus on farming ocean plants that recover the minerals we have been leaching into the oceans for the last few hundred years. Once we can close the loop on phosphates we can start talking about post-industrial-revolution population levels being sustainable.
It's important to understand the challenge before posing a solution.
Fighting global warming would be a LOT easier if we were encouraging people to not have 10 kids...
Ahh, good ol hacker news. Downvotes without a single person having a cogent argument against attempting to limit population growth.
A bus full of people texting on their phones with nobody in the drivers seat and everyone refusing because "it's not my problem". Instead of addressing the glaring issue, let's add WiFi to the bus!
It’s pessimistic, yeah, but we don’t have to even try to have babies. People will keep making that individual choice until we run out of food or energy or something and lots of people, most likely the poor, die.
Because they don't have the higher level thinking skills to realize their reproduction will have negative consequences. That's a horrible reason to not at least attempt to address the issue.